1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless communication device, a program, a wireless communication method, and a wireless communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A wireless LAN (Local Area Network) system as typified by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.11 is becoming increasingly common in place of a wired network for its advantages such as high flexibility of equipment.
A wireless LAN system standardized by the IEEE 802.11 is composed of groups of wireless communication devices which are an access point operating as a master unit and a plurality of stations operating as slave units, and a plurality of stations are connected to one access point. Note that, when a group identifier (SSID) of the access point is open to the public, the station can easily recognize the existence of the access point with a given SSID located nearby by executing scan and select the access point to which it makes connection.
On the other hand, from the viewpoint of security, there is a need to hide the existence of an access point as well. Therefore, an access point which has a stealth function that intentionally hides SSID (e.g. which transmits a beacon not containing SSID) is proposed. Connection between such an access point and a station is made by setting the same SSID as that of the access point to the station, for example.
Incidentally, according to Wi-Fi Direct under Wi-Fi Alliance standard development, it is proposed to form a communication group by determining which of a group owner and a client each of a plurality of wireless communication devices acts as. The group owner operates as a simplified access point and has a function to connect one or two or more clients.
Further, the group owner has a function to hold information of the client being connected and transmit the information of the client together with information of the group owner in response to a request from another wireless communication device. The function is useful for another wireless communication device to select the client or the group owner to which it makes connection. However, when a communication group is formed within a given home, it is a problem in terms of security that wireless communication devices located in a neighboring home or located outdoors, for example, can acquire information of the whole communication group in the home without restriction.
Concerning this point, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2006-229775 discloses a control method that registers equipments onto an access point having the stealth function, so that the access point responds only to a request from the registered equipment and sends SSID to the registered equipment. According to the control method, it is possible to prevent an unregistered equipment from acquiring information (SSID) of the access point.